For people outside the industry, Google’s search updates may seem more like a strange zoo than highly technical updates. Between Penguin, Panda, Hummingbird, and any other assorted animal updates I may have missed, it can be hard to keep up. However all that business owners need to know is that the Penguin 4.0 update, which should occur before the end of 2015, is a great step forward for businesses and agencies alike.

How Will Penguin 4.0 effect my site?

Most of the recent updates have ultimately been aimed at making Google search better for users. Determining search query intent, differentiating between desktop and mobile search experience, and do I dare say possibly accounting for user metrics and behavior? The biggest difference between the 4.0 update and the Penguin 3.0 update on October 17th is that this will be a real time version of the 3.0 update. In other words the algorithm will update continuously  in real time so that as Google picks up there may be spammy links on a site there may be an immediate penalty applied. Conversely, if a webmaster is able to remove those links the positive effects should be fairly immediate once the site is indexed again. This is a great improvement over the old penguin updates where a penalty could result in months of painful attempts to recover from them, see image below. While this may affect some websites in a big way, the path to recovery looks more hopeful than in the past.

How to recover from a Penguin 4.0 Update

Just do the right things. Webmasters should continue to operate in a white hat manner and avoid the old-school “link building” exercises (we prefer to engage in “link earning” but that’s another post ) and focus more on placing links where they may provide value or additional clarity for a reader.
BUT if you do find yourself in a pickle try to find places where you may have added links unnaturally and try to remove them. The effects should be pretty quick especially if you fetch. White Hat moving forward!!!